David Niemitz

Guild Mage 220

Chapter 220: Beauty in the Dark

Liv couldn’t help but sigh in relief the moment she stepped into the shoals of Bald Peak Rift.  She’d led Rosamund and Sidonie partway up the miner’s road to the cut, where she found the boundary of the shoal had withdrawn quite a bit upslope now that there was no eruption in progress.  Bald Peak was only a minor rift, after all, and she had no expectation of finding the corpse of one of the Vædic Lords forgotten somewhere inside.

S...

Guild Mage 219

This one is substantially longer than normal - 3,261 words, when my normal goal is roughly 3k. There was a lot to fit into it, and I rearranged a few things as I went to try to make sure the build up to the ending worked out. I'm always interested in suggestions (even if I don't always get to them right away) but for this chapter, even more than usual. It's a got to be a gradual reveal of the fact that Millie et al have a plan beyond what the guests are aware of, so let me know if it works fo...

Guild Mage 218

Chapter 218: Gathering the Hunt

John Draper, of King’s Highway.  

Keri repeated the information over and over in his head, so that he didn’t forget, all the way back from the Chandler farm to Whitehill.  Despite the fact that all of their company, save for Ghveris and the prisoners, were mounted, the return trip took quite a while longer than the ride out, when everything had been in a rush to save the farmers.

Whatever reluctance had kept the Chandlers in...

Guild Mage 217

Figured out how to attach files in the new interface. There's an unlabeled '+' button that is invisible until you put your mouse in a certain place... grumble grumble. Let me know if it doesn't work!
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Chapter 217: Ambush at the Chandler Farm

By the time Keri had gotten into his enchanted armor, retrieved his Næv’bel, and made his way to the courtyard, Castle Whitehill was buzzing with as much activity as a beehive that had been knocked off a branch.<...

Guild Mage 216

Patreon appears to have changed its settings, and moved/hidden the option to attach files. For the moment I'm going to include google drive links to the epub and pdf and hope I can figure this out for tomorrow.

Epub: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gHg0uFnfzI036wr3oXLao1CpIeWJ3Tdu/view?usp=sharing
PDF: 2025-07-17 16:01:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Guild Mage 215

Chapter 215: Woodsmoke

Wren winged over the white valley.  Everywhere she looked, the snowfall of the evening before lay untrampled on the ground.  She hadn’t had much hope of finding a trail near the burned out husk of the Cotter farm, because it had been clear that the fire had been set - and the family hanged - hours before.  If the raiders were smart, they’d come in the midst of the snowstorm, when low visibility would have shielded their bloody work from sight of...

Crossover!

Alright, so this is too cool not to share. I'm a massive Gundam fan, and I did not realize when we were casting the Guild Mage audiobooks that one of our two narrators, the amazing Fajer Al-Kaisi, wa...

Guild Mage 214

Chapter 214: The Guild in Exile

Liv tucked her skirts under her and took one of the three open seats, two of which were right next to each other.  That put Sidonie on her left, and Rosamund, once she’d walked away from Master Grenfell and the mana-stone at the center of the circle, on her other side.

“Fifteen rings, now,” Rose told her, with a grin.  She crossed one leg over the other and threw her arm over the back of Liv’s chair.

“That’s impressive,�...

Guild Mage 213

Just a quick note on this one - I felt that I had to show how rough some things are on Beatrice, but I also know the subject can be tough to read about. It's tough to write about! It's not going to be a huge, dominating focus, because Triss isn't the main character - but Liv does care about here, and I didn't want to look away from the ways that feudal structures put enormous pressures on women.

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Chapter 213: Sisters

As much as she wanted to fall into the h...

Guild Mage 212

Chapter 212: Alliances

Master Grenfell scowled.  “This is the source you won’t tell us about, Matthew?”  

From his seat at Triss’ side, Matthew nodded.  “Don’t ask again.  It would put my person in a great deal of danger if anyone found out about this.”

Liv poured herself a cup of tea, thinking over what she knew about Matthew’s time at Coral Bay.  Despite the fact that her adopted brother was heir to the Duchy of Whitehill, he�...

Guild Mage 211

Chapter 211: A Wider View

By the time Liv and her friends had crossed the market square and began making their way up the streets of The Hill, most of the excitement had been left behind.  The Lower Banks children turned back rather than risk the neighborhoods of well-to-do merchant shops and the manors of Baron Henry’s knights.  

Liv couldn’t help but glance at the manor her father had purchased: no smoke rose from either of the brick chimneys, and she wondered...

Guild Mage 210

I mentioned this on RR and Discord also, but just so everyone is aware, stubbing of book one will occur Friday, August 15th
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Chapter 210: Embers

Liv couldn’t sleep for hours, filled with a nervous energy that kept her thoughts racing from one problem to another, hunting for solutions when she wasn’t blaming herself for how long it had taken to get the silver crown to Feic Seria.

If she’d been alone, she would have pushed on to Whitehill even thr...

Guild Mage 209

Chapter 209: Sandstone

“That takes care of the waystone,” Sidonie muttered, leaning over Liv’s shoulder so that she could get a good look at the glowing Vædic sigils crawling across the central glass pane in the control room of Feic Seria.  “It will only accept incoming travel from Al’Fenthia, the Tomb of Celris, Bald Peak, Valegaard, the dam, and the ring.  Are you sure about that last one?”

Liv nodded, tracing a finger down the writing that filled the left...

Guild Mage 208

Chapter 208: A Wyrm’s Heart

Liv had been told that Silica was different than the younger, smaller wyrms that House Iravata controlled in battle.  That made sense; none of those wyrms were twelve hundred years old, after all.  None of them - at least not the few she’d encountered - used words of power.

The reality, somehow, was still more than she’d prepared herself for.

Silica’s long, sinuous body was coiled around the open bowl at the center of the mountai...

Guild Mage 207

“If the wyrm dies quickly enough, we could just wait it out,” Keri observed.  “Though I don’t like relying on something outside of our control.”

Liv shook her head.  “That’s not what you’re thinking, is it?” she asked her father.  “Wren, you said that Silica’s intelligent.  She can talk, and she has a word of power.  That means she can make a bargain, doesn’t it?”

Wren let out a whistling breath.  “Maybe.  There was a ...

Guild Mage 206

Chapter 206: The High Desert

The transition from jungle hills to high badlands was gradual, and took place at a remove from the river Airaduinë.  Along the banks, green grass was replaced by lower, woody underbrush, but the color of the land only radically changed a hundred yards or so from the water.  There, dark, fertile soil was replaced by dry, dusty earth, almost sand-like in consistency.  

There was more space between the brush, and the color of it faded...

Guild Mage 205

Chapter 205: Overland

They left Al’Fenthia the next morning, and if Liv could have pushed for the departure to happen sooner, she would have done so.  Only Arjun’s warning in the Tomb of Celris prevented her, though she knew that a few days recovery hadn’t really been enough for her friends.  In the end, it was a compromise that at once took more time than she was comfortable with, but still wasn’t enough to see everyone fully rested.  She knew that it was inadequ...

Guild Mage 204

Today marks the Amazon and Audio publication of the final volume of the Faerie Knight trilogy, which was the first series I wrote on Royal Road. If anyone wants to check it out, it can be found here: https://a.co/d/5VUUVww

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Chapter 204: A Question of Command

“You either need to go seventy-five miles upriver,” Sidonie explained, using shining blue symbols of coherent mana to illustrate t...

Guild Mage 203

Chapter 203: The Puppet Show

On the wooden stage at the front of the audience, fanciful puppets in the garb of warriors and kings, mana beasts and mages, jerked and danced about under the guidance of hidden puppeteers.  As a knight spun about and leaned over, his sword knocked a crowned puppet over, and laughter rippled through the audience.  Wedged in between Liv and Keri, Rei laughed in glee and clapped his hands.  A warm blanket of white fox fur had been wrapped around...

Volume 3 Stubbed; Release 7/1

In anticipation of the Tuesday release of Graal Knight, volume 3 has been stubbed both on RR and on Patreon.

Guild Mage 202

Chapter 202: Courland

The light of waystone travelled faded, and Millie blinked away the hallucinations of the dark places in between.  Around her, a dozen soldiers of the Lucanian Royal Guard crowded the receiving stone of the Falcon’s Roost.  She nearly rolled her eyes when she noticed how many of them held the hilts of their swords: there was no threat to her in Courland.

The waystone was walled in by a hexagon of brick parapets twenty feet high, manned by crossbowm...

Guild Mage 201

This is the penultimate chapter of volume five; we will wrap the book tomorrow, and begin six on Monday. My schedule's all messed up from jet lag, so I wrote this a bit later in the day than usual, but hopefully tomorrow will start to get back into a normal routine.

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Chapter 201: Lady of Winter

While both Arjun and Liv had been to the ring once before, with Elder Aira, Wren and Keri had been, respectively, either escorting prisoners or...

Guild Mage 200

Back to our normal schedule! I know this is posting a bit later than usual, but I'm doing it from a plane, and coming from a different time zone than usual. This is the climax of book 5; we'll have a chapter or two of falling action, and then begin book six.

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Chapter 200: Encrowned

The key of Celris, in the shape of a silver crown, settled onto Liv’s head like oil-soaked wood catching fire.

Beneath the Well of Bones, she had...

Guild Mage 199

Chapter 199: The Beast in the Dark

Keri took a step back from the slumbering war machine, and fell into a defensive guard before once again realizing that he’d lost his Næv’bel during the fight against the winged war-machine.  Instead, he had only the enchanted blades they’d looted from Antrian wreckage.

“As long as they’re asleep, they won’t harm us,” Arjun said.  The healer actually took a step forward and began examining the shadowed machinery.  Af...

Hello from Colorado!

Book 2 cover update

Progress!

Guild Mage 198

As promised, wrote this on the plane! Posting it from - who knows how many feet up :)

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Chapter 198: To Face the Storm

Liv sent four of the blades toward the winged Antrian in arcs from four different angles - half from above, half from below, and two to either side.  At the same time, she sent the other two swords to strike the column of ice that had encased Rosamund.  As soon as all six blades were in motion, she used a backs...

Guild Mage 197

I believe I've mentioned before that we're going on vacation to Colorado.  Pretty early tomorrow morning, we'll be on a plane.  Now, given its a four and a half our flight to Denver, I expect to get a chapter written tomorrow on the plane, and posted to Patreon at some point .  I'm so confident in that that I've set a RR chapter to post automatically Wednesday morning.  I'm also confident I'll get another chapter written on Wednesday the 25th, which is our flight back.

Guild Mage 196

Chapter 196: Clear Water Cenote

Wren pushed Little Crow and Wildcat as hard as she could, for as long as she could.  They flew high above the jungle canopy, unburdened by any need to hunt for their food due to the rations they carried.  She spent her time seeking out tail winds to increase their speed and conserve their strength, and only allowed them to land twice to rest: once at midday, when the sun was high in the sky, and once at dusk.

Liv’s father had ordered...

Demon Sect 1

I couldn't sleep Monday evening, so I ended up writing about half of this on my phone. It's an idea for a Cultivation project I've been toying with for a while, and it's inspired by the anime trope of two people being forced into an accidental marriage - often by some cultural misunderstanding - in the first episode as complete strangers. It's likely to be a bit more humorous than either Guild Mage or Faerie Knight, and probably slightly spicier. I won't be writing it on any sort of sched...